Terrence Mephisto; arrogant, cocky, smart- a bully, unattractive, over weight, and peerless. He glared himself over in the rust spotted mirror of his bathroom discontentedly. He was fifteen now. For his birthday Fosse and Bill had taken him to Raisins. It would have been a nice treat too, if Bill and Fosse hadn't gotten themselves, and him, kicked out by loudly offering each and every one of the Raisins girls a "gynecological examination". Terrence had consoled himself and his lackeys by stating disdainfully that the girls who worked at Raisins were inferior, air headed creatures without a sense of humor and that- really- they weren't his type.
It was, he now acknowledged to himself, a case of sour grapes. No girl was his type, because no girl would have anything to do with a slimy guy like him.
"It's lonely at the top." He said aloud to himself and combed back his greasy wet hair. But perhaps he wasn't at the top. His grades had been steadily falling since the sixth grade. It had started because he didn't have time for classes, for the menial equations and histories that his teachers offered him.
He would play hooky and spend his evenings in his fathers' lab, or collecting specimens from Stark's Pond, anything but sit in a class room of idiots listening to a botched up man-woman lecture on television sitcoms. It was even worse when "Miss" Garrison attempted to actually teach science, mangling the history of evolution into a gay animal orgy- or so he had heard from Bill and Fosse. He proudly had retorted that on the same day his classmates had watched Garrison fling poo- he had been at the bottom of Stark's Pond collecting samples of a bottom dwelling, sightless fish-toad. School was a waste of time- or so he had thought.
It wasn't until recently, when he had actually sat down and attempted his homework, that he realized he didn't know any of it. He didn't know American history, he didn't know basic math- sure he knew history of a sort- natural history, and sure he knew the math needed for his fathers' formulas and experiments but that was practical knowledge, not scholarly knowledge, not what he needed to pass the tenth grade.
Along that trail of thought- he pressed his greasy forehead against the mirror and looked into his own chronically angry eyes- he knew natural history inside out, the origin of species was one thing, but what of his own origins? Here was another area in-which he found himself painfully lacking in knowledge. Dr. Mephisto had taken the time to un-earth Eric Cartman's "father", but when it came to his own son, Dr. Mephisto steered cleverly away from the subject with a guise of cheerful senility.
What did that mean? Was he a clone? A failed experiment? A butt baby? The result of forbidden love? The son of a hooker? A hermaphrodite? Was his mom underage? A close relative? A retarded woman locked in a wheel chair? What horrible secret was his father keeping from him? Maybe she wasn't even human. Maybe she was one of the poly-assed animals kept in the menagerie.
Angrily Terrence tightened a threadbare towel around his waist and stomped out of the bathroom to find his dad. "Today's my birthday, and I deserve to know, I can handle whatever it is." He said to himself, as he had years past. "Dad isn't going to brush it aside this time." But his father, as usual, was in a disarmingly playful mood.
Dr. Mephisto was sitting on the living room floor playing ball with Kevin.
"Dad we need to talk," Mephisto Jr. said angry and revved up.
"Oh good evening son." Mephisto said cheerfully. "I can't talk quite at the moment, I'm teaching Kevin to fetch." He tossed the yellow sponge ball in the air and Kevin caught it in his mouth, turning to grin at Terrence.
"But Da-ad, this is important. It's my birthday and I I /I - I..."
"Oh yes! Happy Birthday son, I utterly forgot. I lusciously apologize for the absent mindedness. Remind me in the morning and I'll drive you and the boys to the aquarium, would you enjoy that?" Mephisto put down the sponge ball and looked at Terrence who was still wet and only in a towel. "Did you experience a moment of Eureka son?" He asked chuckling. The nice thing about having a Mad Scientist for a father was that he accepted off the wall behavior- since his own was far from normal.
Terrence, on the other hand, took himself very seriously, and felt like a fool. Gathering up the last bit of his anger he snapped "You needn't take me to the aquarium at all!" He watched his fathers' face fall for just a moment before the Mad Scientist cheerfully shrugged and answered "Well then where is it you wish to go son?"
"I don't want to go anywhere dad. I want you to tell me my origins."
Mephisto looked perplexed. "You come from... well you've read Darwin and Dawkins and..."
Terrence pointed an accusatory finger "Damnit Dad this is what you always pull. I mean my mother, if I have one."
"Every mammal has got a mother until we learn to simulate the conditions of a womb. Why- even Kevin here was raised in a womb."
"Is that it then? Am I like Kevin?"
Dr. Mephisto chuckled, but it was hollow. "'Like Kevin?' Goodness, luscious, gracious no. You're not at all like Kevin. For instance- look at how tiny and short he is compared to you, and always smiling- while even now you're frowning at me. Not at all like Kevin. Now if you'll pardon me, I'll retire for the night." Then bending down to pat Kevin's head he said "Good night Kevin, and Good night son." And left to his room.
Terrence sat on the floor and crossed his arms angrily. "Stupid, I'm so stupid, Dad always worms his way out."
Kevin waddled over to Terrence with the sponge ball in his hands and dropped it to place his small hands on Terrence's knee. Terrence knocked Kevin away violently and the little mutant toppled over and then sat up still smiling at Terrence only now with a darkening red bruise across his face.
"I hate you Kevin. You always smile and that's why dad likes you best."
Kevin put his arms out to be picked up and Terrence irritably obliged. Kevin was older than Terrence-by many years- Outsiders saw him as sort of the retarded, stunted older brother of Terrence, though truth be told, Kevin had an eerie intelligence to him that only Terrence and Mephisto appreciated.
Kevin pulled on Terrence's ear-lobe beckoning him to follow and then pointed to the basement door. Terrence stood up reluctantly. "Why?" Kevin only leapt out his of arms and ran ahead. Still irritated, but feeling guilty for knocking him, Terrence followed. The mutant clone led him down many stairs; stairs Terrence knew well enough and through the basement, which Terrence also knew. It wasn't until Kevin began attempting to push a large chest away from the wall that Terrence became interested, and pushed at it too, revealing a dark, Kevin sized hole.
"I can't fit." Terrence said with forced contempt to hide his growing curiosity.
Kevin replied by holding up a finger to wait and entered the hole himself. Moments later he returned with battered, yellow rolled up news papers. With a flick of his arms he snapped them open and began spreading the pages out for Terrence to read.
"Is this- about my origins?" Terrence asked excitedly. Kevin only stood back and let Terrence read. As he read his eyes widened at the impossible revelation before him...
On the front page of the paper was a normal looking woman with a kind face and in her arms was a tightly wrapped bundle. The headline above her read as follows:
b Mad Scientist Revives Wife- Ends in Divorce /b
Jennifer Mephesto was revived by her husband
The famous Dr. Mephisto after being declared
legally dead. Jennifer's heart stopped and activity
in her brain ceased at 3am CT last month after a severe car crash
Their 2yr old son Terence Mephesto was also in the car but was unharmed.
Jennifer was declared dead but six hours later was up and talking.
Dr. Mephesto is keeping his technique of revival a secret.
Doctors remain stunned and skeptical that such a feat is possible.
Jennifer Mephesto herself claims to have "seen the light" in the after life
And is filing for divorce, claiming that God "taught her the evils of science".
This journalist remains skeptical of her religious claims as just yesterday she
and Dr. Mephesto's former colleague Doctor Absucrepin announced their engagement.
Terrence scoffed "I guess my dad isn't so bad."